Things are always changing

Well it’s been a while since I’ve updated and there are lots of reasons for that as you may have already surmised. One task that’s been occupying my time is searching for an apartment in the city. The house-sitting job has been a godsend, but with a mid-August return date, I needed to get my butt in gear to find some permanent digs. I’d put off picking a specific location for my new home while I was job searching back in April/May. Now that I’m working almost full-time for the research consulting firm in Burlingame, it made sense to find something on the other side of the Bay Bridge.

While I am still searching for the dream job (you’ll see more about that eventually, but send me a note off-line if you want to help me find it sooner) I had been leaning toward moving back to SF, rather than other places in the area. The climate, diverse people and attitude suited me more than other places. So, I started looking back in July. I have to say that craig's list is a great source for all things and I can’t recommend this community bulletin board enough. I was introduced to it by my friend, Brian, when we worked together in NY and I was looking to move out to California. Thanks Bri! I decided that I wanted to live some place convenient to commuting to the peninsula, had reasonable parking, a neighbor feel, trees and of course a nice apartment with cool roommates.

As much as I could go on about the minutia of my search, I won’t. It was fascinating to me and I suspect less so to anyone else. I did look at a bunch of apartments. I was afraid that I’d end up picking the first one I saw. It wasn’t that great, although the view of the Pacific Ocean was to die for. This would have made me very popular with visiting friends, but living on a fog bank wasn’t going to cut it for me this time around. So I ended up in the Mission district on a tree lined street close to public transit but with reasonable parking (In the four trips I’ve made to the apartment I’ve found a spot within a block or two) with 2 laid back, neat (clean-wise although they seem neat in a cool way too) housemates. There is even a back yard should the need to barbeque arise and enough storage for my basic needs. Yeah, a lot of my stuff will stay in storage. I’ll be looking for the cheapest and most convenient possible way to store the remainder of my stuff for a while. I am hoping the ‘out of sight out of mind’ approach will allow me to let some of it go eventually. I *really* have a lot of stuff.

And I guess the other big thing is that I have a job. I keep pretending that it’s not, but I keep coming to the same place every morning and working on non-personal things all day, so it certainly seems like a job doesn’t it? I’m not sure what my title is and I do pretty much everything without any specific focus it’s hard to describe my job. I have a support role in the company (small- working with a husband & wife team) and have prepared sales and marketing materials, answered the phone, developed a project timeline for the marketing of an upcoming study, updated the contact database with new clients, organized a pile of technical equipment, provided software and network support. I will be doing more sales and marketing things which are different than the computer/network support I’ve done in the past. I like the fact that I was hired based upon my potential to do this sort of work and that I’ll be able to do a lot of different tasks outside of my primary career path.

I think I like it. Today I was very happy with my decision. Other days I fluctuate. It’s a little scary to be out of my element, but there were a lot of days when being in my element sucked big time. With every job you do, there are tasks you enjoy and those you don’t. I ended up doing a lot of tasks I hated because I was paid a generous wage to do so. Now I’m rethinking the whole thing. I made a lot more money before, but it was spent without enough thought and didn’t go as far and last as long as it should have. I’ll be poor and in debt for a while, but I am hoping that I’ll find something that will make me happier in the long run.

What are you happy about these days?